Re:US to ban soaps and other products containing microbeads
by dnautics on Friday December 11, 2015 @06:30PM
(#10720894)
I think most free marketers would lump (certain) fishing quotas and property rights under "free markets", artificial though they may be.
SOX and NOX markets as well. Carbon markets (as they exist), not so much, but mostly because of completely insane equivalencies baked in, and weird credit schemes.
Re:US to ban soaps and other products containing microbeads
by bduerst on Friday December 11, 2015 @06:51PM
(#10720976)
Not in any sense of the word free market is an enforced artificial market "free".
In fact, free market socialists see property rights on any productive property as skewing markets to favor the owners, which leads to wealth disparity and disproportionate ownership, making it not a free market. We see that today with free-market capitalism and the top 1%, which is why we have social welfare programs in place to redistribute wealth.
Re:US to ban soaps and other products containing microbeads
by dnautics on Friday December 11, 2015 @07:26PM
(#10721127)
Free in free market usually refers to free will, and has little to do with disparity or disproportionality. You can choose to define free market however you wish but I think it's worth noting that you're out of line with how most people use language. Your point that property ownership is enforced is taken, but usually that's within the scope of "free" markets.
There are many shared resources that are easily exploitable by the free market. A central authority can create artificial markets on that resource to combat the exploitation by the free market, but it's still being heavily regulated which is not a free market characteristic.
One example of this is carbon credits with global warming, another is the Alaskan tradeable fishing quotas. Even following the common example of the Pilgrims, it was the enforcement of property regulations that solved the free-market exploitation of the land.